by L. C. Warman
“Interesting. You still haven’t said why you suspect me.”
Lia nodded. “Just because of Katie, actually.”
“Katie?”
“You’re close with her. And she wants to protect you. She basically said as much when I talked with her; she wasn’t there for Julia, and she doesn’t want to make that mistake again.”
“Wants to be there for me by letting me blackmail Harry’s mother?”
“Doesn’t want to rat you out, mostly.” Lia shrugged. “So? Am I close?”
Bella blinked, considering. Again Lia had the feeling that she was on the edge of the precipice, that Bella would either give her everything, or nothing. No matter what, the scandal would die away…the memory of it, like everything else bad in St. Clair, would become a ghost, a mirage, something that people could no longer remember whether it was reality or just part of a dream.
“Yeah,” Bella said. “You’re close enough. I blackmailed her.” She stretched back onto the couch, resting her hands behind her head. “You know Paulette. You know how she can be.”
“I do.”
“So do you blame me?”
“I’m wondering if you’ll tell me exactly what you were thinking, first.”
Bella grinned, and for a moment she was high school Bella Aspen again—the girl with the loud laugh and quick wit who had always been so boisterous, so lively.
“I don’t have any big long sob story,” Bella said. “And I didn’t have anything like what happened to Julia happen to me. I guess that makes me pretty bad, in a way. No good excuses.” She sighed. “You know in high school, what I was most insecure about?”
“You didn’t seem like you were insecure about anything.”
Bella shrugged. “I was. I wasn’t gorgeous like Katie or smart like Julia or creative like you.”
You were the funny one, Lia wanted to say, but held her breath.
“I compared myself to you guys a lot. And most of the time it was fine, because we were friends. I figured there was good stuff coming down the line for me, too. And even if I was a late bloomer, I thought maybe college would change some of that. It did—kind of. Except I made the colossal mistake of attending a party with Paulette McKenzie before I left.
“You know what the really stupid part is? I used to idolize her before that day. I mean it. It sounds ridiculous, but when you were dating Harry, and I saw her…she was so elegant, so graceful. Like everything I wasn’t wrapped up into one person. And I went up to her at this country club party and introduced myself. She was polite at first, asking where I was going to school and what I planned to major in, and everything like that. I said science—this was back when I thought maybe I could do something in biology, or veterinary science—and she just gave me this look. And then she said something I’ve never forgotten. She said it’s important for girls to have a good career in case they can’t marry well.”
Lia snorted. She couldn’t help it. It was the stupidest thing she had ever heard—a piece of archaic advice that she couldn’t even believe Paulette had said aloud. Bella’s eyes widened at Lia’s snort, and then she was grinning back, and then the two of them were laughing at the words, doubled over, crying as they tried to catch their breath.
“What a joke,” Lia said. “She’s a complete joke. What did you say?”
Bella sobered a little. “Well, nothing. I was eighteen, fresh off a breakup, and was keenly aware that I was not, in fact, the kind of girl who would ‘make a good match.’ But that stuck with me. It stuck with me freshman year, when my next boyfriend dumped me. And it stuck with me when I realized I wasn’t cut out for molecular biology and switched my major to communications. I felt like Paulette was over my shoulder every single time, whispering that I wasn’t good enough, that I’d never land a ‘good match,’ that if my career was failing before it even took off, then whew! I was really in trouble.”
“But you know that’s not true,” Lia said. “You don’t have to study biology to be successful. And who cares if you marry well? What does that mean, anyway? Paulette married a man she didn’t love and is alone now.” And cheated on him, and is dating his brother, and is way too involved in her new romance.
Bella smiled wryly. “Yeah, I get it. Trust me. I also get that it sounds like I’m blaming Paulette for my problems. But they’re mine, you know? I’m the one who wasn’t cut out for the major that I chose. I’m the one who messed up my career. Who let some old woman’s words get into my head.
“And it didn’t get better after I graduated, by the way. I took some job close to home because I thought I could get on my feet, whatever that meant, maybe do a post-bacc in some biology and chemistry courses, in case I did want to try vet school after all, you know? But it was like I was just sucked into some vortex where everything that I tried to do screwed up. The job was in marketing—Katie helped me get it, actually—and I just could not get into it. So I quit, and then I tried some paralegal position, and was fired from that. And then my parents really started to worry and talked about sending me to law school, as if that somehow followed from not cutting it as a paralegal, and so I moved. To Chicago.”
“You were in Chicago?”
“Yup. Three years. Working as a temp, actually. I thought about you a lot, you know. Wondered if you were going through the same loneliness and doubt that I was. Missing home. Feeling like home was absolutely the last place that you should be going.”
“Yes,” Lia said. “I think it’s impossible for us to feel anything else, when we leave St. Clair.”
Bella nodded. “Well, I managed it for three years. Dated some people. Tricked myself into thinking I was putting down roots. Actually got a half-decent job at a nonprofit where I got to work with animals sometimes.”
“So what happened?”
“What always happens. I was pulled back. I was getting by there, but I had two roommates and hardly any savings. My parents worried about me. They kept telling me that I couldn’t live in a city like Chicago if I wasn’t making ‘doctor’ money or ‘real’ money. I guess I never found out what kind of money I was actually making.” She smiled bitterly again. “And I got older, and I started to feel like they were kind of right. Living with roommates and trying to cut it on a low salary seems brave when you’re in your twenties. It seems stupid when you’re in your thirties, or nearly. And my parents weren’t helping—it was their way of telling me they didn’t approve of my life decisions, which was perfectly their prerogative, of course. But they did tell me that if I came back home, they could help. They’d set me up in an ‘investment property’ here that could be my ‘nest egg.’ They had some friends who ran nonprofits who could ‘match or even exceed’ what I was making in Chicago. Basically, coming home to St. Clair was the cushier path. It was a way to make my whole life easier, and I took it.”
Lia nodded. Her parents, too, had reached out to her over the years, talking about a local theater she could volunteer at, suggesting that there were “many nice companies” in the area who could use a girl like her. That had stopped when they had retired down to Florida, though Lia could remember the wistful days when she wondered if resistance was truly better, wondered whether she should just give up and stop being so stubborn and try to actually live a nice life.
“I wasn’t cut out for trying to make it without my parents’ help, basically,” Bella said. “St. Clair sang her little siren call, and I was back here. And you know who the first person I ran into was?”
“Paulette.”
“Bingo. And she didn’t remember what she had told me oh, seven or eight years ago, at that point. She just asked what I did for a living and then acted singularly unimpressed. When she heard I was single, she gave me this look, like, Well, of course you are.
“I shouldn’t have let it get under my skin, but I did. St. Clair was easier financially for me, but when I came back, everyone was different. Julia had gone through something and no one wanted to talk about it. Katie felt guilty about not being there. Atul was all s
ecretive and uppity because he had been there. I didn’t have my friends, I had an awful career, and I was back home with nothing to show for my life.”
“I get it,” Lia said softly.
“Yeah, well, you didn’t make the same stupid mistakes I did. Because yeah, the next time I saw Paulette was at the New Year’s party a few days ago. And I blackmailed her.”
Lia suppressed a shudder. She felt Bella watching her closely, analyzing her expression.
“It was stupid,” Bella said. “I was just tired of not feeling good enough. Tired of the McKenzies pretending to be perfect like they always were. And to be honest—I thought it wasn’t the worst time to do it, considering you were back in town.”
“Because people might suspect me.”
“That. And because you had done what I never could—leave St. Clair for good. Successfully.”
Bella looked a little ill after she finished, as though the words had pained her coming out. Lia wanted to protest—she wanted to say that she had not left St. Clair successfully after all, that she was a bigger failure than Bella, that Bella had it all wrong. But, she also knew it was a matter of perspective. She knew that when it came down to it, Paulette McKenzie felt no more a success than the rest of them, except in brief fleeting moments of pride quickly eclipsed by insecurity.
“I dropped off a second letter,” Bella continued. “I started to think maybe the money would be nice. Maybe it would let me have a fresh start.”
“But what were you blackmailing her about?” Lia burst.
“Nothing. Nothing at all. But you don’t get to be as rich as Paulette McKenzie without some skeletons in the closet, right? I had heard about her husband. I knew Lucas’s uncle had a falling out with him. I figured there was something there that would scare her enough to consider it.”
“Risky.”
Bella shrugged. “Yeah. And stupid, too. But it’s done now. Paulette didn’t pay. I guess the joke’s on me.”
Lia wasn’t sure what to say. She wanted to reach out and shake Bella, tell her that she had played a dangerous game where a lot more people could have gotten hurt. At the same time, she wanted to pull Bella into a hug, tell her that everything would be all right, persuade her that nothing was possibly as dire as she believed it to be.
“You going to tell her?” Bella said.
“No, of course not. It’s not my business. But you’re done, then? Really done?”
A flash of defiance rippled across Bella’s face, and then she seemed to deflate again, defeated. “I’m done,” she said. “I’m going to get out of this place, one way or another. With or without Paulette’s money.”
Lia nodded. Bella rose, and Lia followed her upstairs, where they traded talk on the weather, Bella’s face growing carefully neutral, all the signs of her confession seeping out of her. By the time they arrived at the door, Bella’s expression was closed off and defiant once more, and Lia had a feeling that if she asked her again about the blackmail, Bella would deny everything. She wanted to say that Bella could leave St. Clair easily if she really desired it, and that she could build a new life for herself if that was what she really wished. But Lia knew better than anyone how wonderful and terrible and beautiful and enticing the town was, and knew too that Bella could complain about her lack of agency all she wished—at the end of the day, something in Bella had decided to be miserable, and only she could decide to lift herself out of that.
Still, Lia pulled her into a hug as she left, and Bella stiffened, surprised. She still looked surprised when Lia turned to go, waving goodbye to Bella as she stepped into the unforgiving winter air.
Chapter 40
Lia drove next to her second stop, Wolfclaw Coffee. She remembered many high school days of drinking overpriced caramel lattes after school, sprawled out on the café’s comfy armchairs, pretending that she too liked black coffee whenever her crush at the the time, Harry, told her that he did. She had been so young then, so innocent and full of dreams and hopes and ambitions.
And now? Now she was still young. Still ambitious and hopeful, but in a much different way. Her first wild plans had been checked, and Lia felt she approached her future with a more practical bent than before. She would be happy, curse it all, happy if it killed her. She would not let her failures and her insecurities stand in her way.
Lucas rose when he saw her, smiling. Lia blushed and reddened, accepting the pink-colored latte from him with a quick thanks. “Beetroot,” Lucas said. “I haven’t tried it yet—don’t kill me if it’s awful.”
Lia laughed and slid into the seat opposite him. Lucas studied her.
“You’re leaving, then,” he said. “You’ve decided?”
“I’m leaving.”
“Definitely? I can’t convince you to stay?” His tone was teasing, but Lia could see the quick look of hurt that he gave her, covered just as quickly by an easy smile.
“Not you and not anyone. I’m not ready to come back to St. Clair.” Lia looked down at her drink. “But I think maybe I’ll look for some things in the city. Some teaching jobs. There’s a theater downtown, and my mom knows someone—”
“The Radford Theater?” Lucas burst. “That’s amazing! So will you live in St. Clair, then, or in the city, or…?”
Lia grinned. “If I get the job, I’ll live in the city for a bit. I’ve always wanted to.” It would give her the chance to be back but not back—to try to reach out to Katie and Atul and even Bella, and see what she could repair. And the chance to carve out her own identity, to remake her life outside of the claustrophobic confines of the town she grew up in.
“If you get the job, of course,” Lucas said. “Well, since I think that’s as good as a done deal, I think we should celebrate.”
“Celebrate that I’m applying for a job?”
“Why not?”
Lia laughed.
“Dinner, tonight,” Lucas said. “On me.” He turned suddenly shy, clearing his throat and taking a sip of his latte, then proceeding to choke on it. “Ugh,” he said. “Earthy.”
Grinning, Lia shook her head. “The beets should have been a good hint.”
“What can I say? I like bold flavors. I’m adventurous. Wild. Exciting.”
“You’re a tax lawyer, aren’t you?”
Lucas nodded. “But if you’re not free, of course, I don’t want—”
“I’m free,” Lia said quickly. “That is—yes, I would love to.”
A smile broke across Lucas’s face, splitting it from ear to ear. “Really? I mean, of course, wonderful. I’ll make reservations.” He started chattering quickly about St. Clair’s new restaurants, about the best places to eat, about the spots that had gone downhill. Lia flushed, embarrassed by how pleased it all made her. She thought of Bella, poor Bella, who felt stuck in St. Clair and was consumed by her own shortcomings. She thought of cruel Paulette, who was so torn up by her desires and her shame that she could barely think rationally. She thought of Julia, in self-imposed, happy exile, and Harry, moving on with his life, putting the right puzzle pieces together for his own happiness.
And Lia herself? She was far from figuring it out, she decided, but she felt closer now than she had in the past ten years.
Because she had faced coming home, and the worst of her fears had been realized, and she was still here now.
Because she was not ashamed about what she had done, or her failures, any longer.
Because unlike Paulette, and even unlike Bella, Lia would choose to be happy. In St. Clair, or outside of it.
“What?” Lucas said, stopping short as he watched her expression.
“Nothing,” Lia said, smiling. “I’m happy.”
Acknowledgments
One of my favorite parts about writing is that I get the chance to work with and get to know so many talented people.
Thank you to Caroline and Alexandra for their expertise, knowledge, and creativity.
A big thank you to Joyce for her smart, thoughtful, and funny feedback. It’s a true pleas
ure to receive!
And to my family—I love you all. To my father, I think about your strength, your character, and your humility all of the time. To my mother, you are the strongest, most formidable woman I know.
And as always, thank you to you, reader, for showing up. I’m so grateful for you.
Also by L.C. Warman
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* * *
ST. CLAIR MYSTERIES:
* * *
The Disappearance of Charlotte Walters
The Last Real Girl (Book 1)
The Last Real Crime (Book 2)
The Last Real Secret (Book 3)
* * *
The Eastwick Mansion Mysteries
A Death at Eastwick (Book 1)
A Scandal at Eastwick (Book 2)
A Betrayal at Eastwick (Book 3)
About the Author
L.C. Warman is the author of the St. Clair mystery series. She grew up in New England, in a town where real estate contracts stipulated that you couldn’t back out if you discovered your new place was haunted. She currently lives in a Michigan lakeside town with her husband and two dogs.